A New Perch

A steel marker, called a perch, has stood on the nasty shoal in the mouth of Kilchoan Bay for some years.  Last winter it either fell over through corrosion or, as has happened before, it was hit by a ship.  Either way, as reported by The Diary here, it urgently needs replacing.

A close-up of the damage shows that the base of the perch is badly corroded by sea water.  Removing the old one, and creating a secure base for a replacement, would be a bad enough job on shore, but this has to be done during short 'windows' in the tide.  Fortunately, a combination of local residents and some of our regular visitors has taken on the job.

The new one is stainless steel and will be installed in two stages, with the lower half set into the concrete block that sits on the rock and then the upper half installed once the concrete has set. The new perch was designed by Chris Gane under strict instructions from Alasdair MacColl. It has two inserts to give it extra strength and was welded up at Barr & Stroud, an old engineering company in Glasgow, by Michael Kerr whose main job is welding the periscopes on Royal Navy submarines. The steel tubes were donated by Caparo, an engineering company in the West Midlands, with Chris Gane and John Chapple sharing the painting.

Work has already started on preparing the concrete block.  The old pole was successfully cut off but quite a bit of work remains to dig out the base of the old one from the concrete.  An hour's drilling with a jack hammer - courtesy of Dave Cash - only got about six inches into the block.

The Diary is full of admiration for the team who have taken on this task.  All of them are well aware of the dangers of the shoal, so what they are doing is entirely for the benefit of visitors in yachts and pleasure boats, and commercial fishermen who come into the area, often to anchor during bad weather.

Many thanks to Chris Gane for photographs and story.